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HOW TO SAVE BASEBALL

About these 4-hour baseball games: a suggestion that would kill several diseased birds with a single stone: technology. If we can put a football coach in direct, exclusive, instantaneous communication with his QB, how about same thing in baseball for manager-&-catcher, catcher-&-pitcher? Baseball’s biggest time-wasters are slow pitchers, catcher- pitcher conferences, and on-field conferences of any kind that involve a manager. My suspicion is that many of the catcher-pitcher conferences have to do with a well-founded suspicion that the other team (especially the baserunners) is stealing your signs, and that the rest of the catcher-pitcher conferences have to do with the pitcher voicing discomfort with the catcher’s pitch selection. If the catcher and pitcher can communicate swiftly and securely, that alone would probably save at least a half-hour per game, maybe more. Same with managers and pitching coaches telling the pitcher he is losing his arm angle or whatever. Once you have the technology in place, a time clock on all these delays could be easily enforced. While I kind of like the pace of the current game, which gives me time to argue with my wife about the manager’s next move, I could readily learn to live with the change if it saved me an hour per game. Come to think of it, we could maybe do the same thing with pro golf, where most of the time-wasting consists of “reading” greens – even though the pros all have topographic charts on every green and thus there is really no need to “read” anything, so all the fooling around is little more than a tic, a style matter, a useless ritual.

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2 thoughts on “HOW TO SAVE BASEBALL”

Perhaps you should consider how to save pro football. From the political bull to owners with no cajones to a defenseman cannot touch a qb to to a defensive back who must wait until the pass is caught before he can do anything to shake it loose or worse hit the receiver.

Some other suggestions to speed pace of play: 1) Ban batting gloves. I don’t remember Ted Williams or Mickey Mantle needing one. Batting glove fidgeting is wasted time. 2) Enforce 1 minute breaks between 1/2 innings. This would save at least 30 minutes per game. 3) No time outs or stepping out of the batters box once the pitcher begins throwing to the hitter. Who knows how much time this would save? 4) Cut the number of relief pitcher warm up throws from 8 to 3. They’re already warmed up when they come into the game.

There are probably other time saving measures. I’m sure, though, that a standing rule limiting time of play to 2 hours would make them unnecessary.